The KDE Team has just announced the release of KDE 2.0.1. While the release is primarily for updated translations and documentation and for the addition of Japanese as a supported language, it also fixes many of the very annoying bugs in 2.0. A summary of the fixes and a KDE 2.0.1 Info Page are also available. As always, enjoy!

Comments

Two things:
-where are the slackware packages? i converted teh rpms to tgz format with rpm2tgz but this leads me to my next question:

-kde2.0 installed to /opt/kde2 when I used teh pacakges or compiled from scractch and set KDEDIR to /opt/kde2. But when I tried installing these new packages nothing gets installe ther, but rather fills up stuff in /usr/*. I REALLY REALLY liked having kde all in the /opt/kde2 dir since it was so EASY to upgrade (mv /opt/kde2 /opt/kde2.old) and then install. PLEASE, can somebody help me find out how I can install all these new bugfixes into /opt/kde2? :)

The Slackware packages should show up soon in slackware-current. Or you could build them from scratch if you're patient.

But converting an RPM to tgz is not always the best thing to do. As you've already seen, Redhat/Mandrake install under /usr while Slackware installs under /opt. You will also miss the /etc/profile.d/kde.sh file meant for Slackware.

Does someone know about the system how the icons at the Desktop are arranged when you "Arrange icons"? I have lots of Directorys and files on my desktop an everything is mixed up. It woud be great if KDE had a sorting mechanism that someone understands. E.G. sorting by name or by filetype. Also an auto-sort function would be great.

Right, the only translations available for RH7 seem to be in this directory:ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.0.1/distribution/rpm/RedHat/7.0/noarch
and the British translation is NOT one of them. This is very strange as I'm using the rpms for SuSE 7.0 and there are at least 30 different translations available... Maybe you should contact the pakagers who created the RH rpms. (Another alternative would be to switch to SuSE... )

Thanks, but RH suites me just fine at the moment . KDE2.0.1 also seems to be OK with the 2.0 locales, so I'll just leave it as that for the time being. I think I will fire an e-mail to the packagers as soon as I have time.

Great work, 2.0.1 was finished quickly, but I have to say I'm very disappointed ! THE showstopper is still not fixed ! When will it be possible to run the taskbar outside the panel ? Why is Kasbar not downloadable (or if it is, where ? Searching through the whole web only gives me notes that it's avaible via CVS, but because of the firewall here at work I'm not able to connect to CVS).
Many people now have complained about this, and it is absolutely neccessary to run the taskbar outside the panel...
I'd be very happy if someone could tell me how to fix this, because it's simply very ugly and contraproductive to have this way too small taskbar in the panel.
C'ya,
StonedBones

Please could someone make diffs 2.0-2.0.1 - I get the stuff via analogue telephone line, i.e. about 2,5 hours of download for all of kde - that's too much for bug fixes and documentation improvements.
This wouldn't be much work for some friendly kde-developer.

I'm experiencing some trouble with kde-2.0(.1).
System is RH7.0 with updates applied on a Athlon-based computer, with ibm java sdk-1.3.
*Konqueror:java often stops working (applets aren't executed anymore) and with side effect that the url field doesn't react on keyboardinput anymore. So konqueror has to be killed and restarted to be usable again.
*Arts:the multimediaplayer doesn't play mp3's (SB-PCI128)Though when I start kde it plays the startup-wav very nicely , xmms does work properly
still.
Are these problems related to RH7.0 being a bit experimental or is the athlon not quite compatible enough or should I use another sdk??

I had some Problems with my SB PCI 128 too (AMD Duron System). I am using SuSE 7.0. My problem was that my PCI 128 did not have the usual ES1371 Chip, but the newer ES5880. So the hardware detection recognized the right card (PCI 128) but with the ES1371 (didn't work well). I simply downloaded an update of alsaconfig from the SuSE support database and the whole thing worked. Good luck.

i had a problem regading with my multimedia player i'm using win95. i can't play my vcd, but there's no problem in my cd-rom when i'm playing it it appears "install a driver that support this type of file. now what i'm supposed to do with this kind of problem. thanx

After installing KDE2 and using kdm to login, all of my console shells did not have their path set correctly. I "solved" this by simply forcing each console shell to be a login shell(an extra parameter to the console usually).

Now with kde2.0.1, the situation has got worse :-( Now, no path is being set correctly and I am given the failsafe option of just an xterm when X starts. It fails to find any of my session types.

To use an real-life example here: My father-in-law is a big fan of Saab cars.
He's a card-carrying member of local Saab-club, and he's constantly telling
me how great and reliable Saabs are. And while he's doing that, he totally
overlooks the fact that his Saab has been in the shop two times over the past
two months, how it sometimes spontaneously turns the turn-signals on and how
the handbrake doesn't work properly. To him, those problems are irrelevant
because he's in love with the car.

In a way, same thing would apply here. If I tested KDE with a mindset that
everything is absolutely fabulous, minor problems might get overlooked.

If I really pushed my in-law to mention 10 bad things in his Saab, he propably
could notice and mention required number of flaws. But if he just keeps on
thinking that his car is the best thing since sliced bread, those flaws would
go overlooked. THIS is what I'm talking about here.

Note: I'm _NOT_ claiming that KDE sucks (well, all software sucks, some just
suck less than others ;)). Far, far from it. It's my desktop of choice and I
use it every day. That said, I think it could be even better, and it is my
intention to nitpick my way through KDE. And it helps there if I make the
conscious decision to find the flaws in KDE. To some, some of the flaws that
I might discover are so minor that they are not worth worrying about. But
again: if I make it my life's mission to find those flaws, then I will find
them.

This isn't about how I feel about KDE. That do I really think that it sucks or
not. It's about the mentality. If I test KDE while thinking "KDE sucks", it
doesn't have to mean that I really think that KDE sucks. I'm having problems
putting my thoughts in to words here...

> ah, dualism. =) it's either kick ass or it sucks, but it can't be both at
> the same time?

Sure it can :). Make no mistake: I love KDE. What I'm talking about here is
the _mentality_ of testing KDE, not the actual feelings towards the desktop.

I do not have an "attitude". I do not think that KDE sucks, overall. I talked
about mentality, not actual feelings towards the desktop.

Again: I'm not saying that KDE sucks, and I apologize if it sounded like that.
What I talked about is a way of testing KDE. If I test KDE thinking that
"this thing sucks", it desn't really mean that I think KDE sucks, it's just a
preconditioned way of thinking to find any flaws in the system. If I start
testing KDE and I already think that "KDE is the best thing since sliced
bread!", then I might overlook many flaws and errors in the desktop.

I've been a heavy Helixcode Gnome user for the past six months, but I've got to say, KDE 2 is awesome! Konquerer is especially impressive -- it shows the doubters that, yes Virginia, an excellent web browser can be produced by a small team quickly without reinventing the operating system wheel (read: Giant green monster which knocks over tall buildings of otherwise productive programmers).

One suggestion: It'd be nice if, upon first run, KDE would automagically, optionally, import the Gnome menu items. Then I'd have the best of both worlds.

Congrats, y'all, and thanks for sticking it out in the face of the Gnome winds. You've proven that GUI competition is good -- really good -- for everyone.

Congratulation to KDE team for the 2.0.1 release! I've been using Mandrake 7.2 with KDE2, and it's been great - especially Konqueror. I really like it, and I think Konqi is much better than Netscape 4.7x and Mozilla!

I'm one of Gnome Foundation members, and although I only speak for myself (not for all Gnome coders), I really wish that KDE and Gnome can be unified step-by-step.

Maybe it can be started little by little. Currently Gnome uses /usr/share/gnome/apps for storing its menu entries, while KDE uses /usr/share/applnk. Both KDE and Gnome use the same ".desktop" file format for its menu entry. I hope that maybe someday Gnome and KDE can use a global menu instead of seperated menu.

Just FYI, when I went to KDE 2.0.1 from 2.0, I suddenly needed libGLU, which is apparently a set of OpenGL utilities. I tried re-installing XFree86 4.0.1, even re-downloading the source and compiling it, but that didn't install libGLU. Finally, I downloaded mesa's OpenGL-compatible 3D implementation (http://www.mesa3d.org/), which installed libGLU. Either my 2.0 install was incorrect and yet somehow still ran, or this library wasn't required until 2.0.1. In general, as I've gone from KDE 1.x to 2.0 to 2.0.1, it seems as though these kinds of dependencies are not as clearly described as I'd like to see them. It'd be nice to have a README that lists all the known dependencies in order to install KDE. It seems as though the only dependency ever listed is QT, whereas there are quite a few more packages required than that.

... why are kde releases always bundled with all possible kde applications?
i don't see why i need a new version of ktuberling or even knode. i didn't see any changes in most of the programs i just downloaded. wouldn't it be a better idea to release only a new version of kdebase, kdelibs, etc?
i don't see why you have to bundle the DE with the applications. even microsoft isn't so strict.
i want a new version of ktuberling if there is a new release of ktuberling and i want a new version of kde if there is a new release of kde.
i don't even use kde. i use icewm so single releases of konqueror of kmail would be much more exciting for me.

... why are kde releases always bundled with all possible kde applications?
i don't see why i need a new version of ktuberling or even knode. i didn't see any changes in most of the programs i just downloaded. wouldn't it be a better idea to release only a new version of kdebase, kdelibs, etc?
i don't see why you have to bundle the DE with the applications. even microsoft isn't so strict.
i want a new version of ktuberling if there is a new release of ktuberling and i want a new version of kde if there is a new release of kde.
i don't even use kde. i use icewm so single releases of konqueror of kmail would be much more exciting for me.

... why are kde releases always bundled with all possible kde applications?
i don't see why i need a new version of ktuberling or even knode. i didn't see any changes in most of the programs i just downloaded. wouldn't it be a better idea to release only a new version of kdebase, kdelibs, etc?
i don't see why you have to bundle the DE with the applications. even microsoft isn't so strict.
i want a new version of ktuberling if there is a new release of ktuberling and i want a new version of kde if there is a new release of kde.
i don't even use kde. i use icewm so single releases of konqueror of kmail would be much more exciting for me.

Great Konqueror is finally able to understand some - albeit - very limited javascript and CSS. It is still not a replacement to Netscape unfortunately although some reactions go there.

One annoying problem encountered sofar (after 1 hour): half the screensavers don't work anymore because the parameters past to them from kcontrol are incorrect. If you try to select one that might work, you end up with multiple screensavers running in the background or a screensaver not allowing you back on (thank god there are still virtual terminals from slaying them).

Great Konqueror is finally able to understand some - albeit - very limited javascript and CSS. It is still not a replacement to Netscape unfortunately although some reactions go there.

One annoying problem encountered sofar (after 1 hour): half the screensavers don't work anymore because the parameters past to them from kcontrol are incorrect. If you try to select one that might work, you end up with multiple screensavers running in the background or a screensaver not allowing you back on (thank god there are still virtual terminals from slaying them).

I downloaded and tried the kde2.
I overall like it very much, however,
I found some annoying features:
The file selector is much worse than the one that
came with kde 1: The worse thing is that file names get truncated, and that renders the
file selector almost useless. I managed to display also other information along file names
with kde1. Is there a way to change the widget behaviour?
The other annoying thing is that the panel does
not work too well when in the left corner and
with mac-like menus.

Uh, also the Window manager does not support
the activate-and-pass-click option anymore on
button 1.

Is there a solution to all of the above, or is
something planned for the next releases?

I downloaded and tried the kde2.
I overall like it very much, however,
I found some annoying features:
The file selector is much worse than the one that
came with kde 1: The worse thing is that file names get truncated, and that renders the
file selector almost useless. I managed to display also other information along file names
with kde1. Is there a way to change the widget behaviour?
The other annoying thing is that the panel does
not work too well when in the left corner and
with mac-like menus.

Uh, also the Window manager does not support
the activate-and-pass-click option anymore on
button 1.

Is there a solution to all of the above, or is
something planned for the next releases?

How do you get doublesize icons with KDE2? I really only am stiking with GNOME for that feature. It means a lot to me, though, since I run at 1024x768! Does anyone know where in the configuration/kontrol this is?

Just go into the control center, click 'Look n Feel, click Icons. Then, you can increase the amount of detail the icons are drawn with by choosing 16, 32, or 48, and use pixel-doubling. 48 w/ pixel doubling created icons so easily visible and huge, using a maximized konqi window at 1024x768, i could only view 24 icons at once! Of course, you don't have to make them that large. :)